Nuke The Site From Orbit (the Final solution of the scraper arms-race question)

Presented at Kiwicon 4: The four e:Sheep-persons of the Cyber Infopocalypse (2010), Nov. 28, 2010, 3 p.m. (15 minutes)

Scraping is painful. You all know the drill. Jetstar vs Flightcentre, Sky vs everyone, cellpadding 5 vs cellpadding 6. Ad nauseum. Tools are evolving, but countermeasures are evolving too. Arms races are one of the most fun games to play. But adjusting your one-page imdb victimisation script for the 18th time in a month gets old really fast. It's time for a revolutionary (but still supremely lo-tek) approach. In this lightning talk I will be explaining how to do it right, dare i say, sustainably, and with a lot less work for lazy hackers who just want to get on with doing something cool with their 'liberated' data. After all, scrapers don't steal data, but They Sure Do Help!


Presenters:

  • Oddy
    Oddy is best known for pwning Microsoft's thanksgiving with a "funny domain name" a few years back, followed by hacking up a scanner to spy on all of japan's offices through videoconferencing gear. After a couple years testing pens at a cumbersomely-hyphenated Auckland infosec firm, he is now terrorising the great city of Wellington with advanced datamining technology that he couldn't possibly talk about unless you ply him with beer.

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